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David Ogden Stiers, who has died aged 75, made his mark in the long-running television black comedy M*A*S*H, playing Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, a grumpy Boston blue-blood who thought his posting to the remote 4077th medical station in Korea was beneath him.

Stiers, a regular cast member from 1977 to the show’s finale in 1983, joined in the sixth season, after the departure of Larry Linville as pompous Major Frank Burns, a character with few redeeming features who had provided the love interest for Loretta Swit’s voluptuous head nurse “Hot Lips” Houlihan.

David Ogden Stiers and Loretta Swit in M*A*S*HCredit:
Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock

Unlike his predecessor Burns, Winchester was a talented surgeon, cultured and essentially likeable, though his patrician manner and...